On November 30th 2016, the login feature of FolkTuneFinder.com will be removed, and you will no longer be able to use favourites and group tunelists.
One month ago I wrote the a blog post about sign-in on FolkTuneFinder and placed a message on the site. I also put word out on the FolkTuneFinder Facebook page. Since then I have recieved only two messages. There are 5,367 accounts on FolkTuneFinder. Some of them are spam, but some of them are real users who log in and use favourites.
As I explained, the Mozilla Persona service is being retired at the end of the month. This means that if I wanted to keep user accounts going I would have to put in place a new system and manage the transfer to that new system. That would be a lot of work.
FolkTuneFinder is something I do in my spare time. It serves up to 3,000 page views to over 300 people per day, so it’s something I really want to keep running. But I have to make difficult choices about which features I want to support. This decision isn’t easy but I think it’s the right one.
What exactly is happening?
I am removing the log-in system, which means that access to favourites and group tunelists will be removed. This is going to be a permanent change.
I will send you an email with a snapshot of your favourites as an attachment. This means that you will have a copy of your favourites. If you haven’t received it by December 2016, please contact joe@folktunefinder.com and I’ll re-send it.
Will I lose data?
No. You will recieve a copy of a snapshot of your favourites by email. I won’t delete them immediately, and I want to make sure that everyone has a chance to get a copy.
But you will lose the ability to use favourites on the FolkTuneFinder site.
What am I being sent?
You will be sent an email with two attachments. They both contain your favourites list, but in different formats:
bookmarks.html is a document that you can import into other programs and systemsintros.html is a document that contains all your favourites, showing the introduction of the tune in musical notation
If you want them in another format, email me.
What should I do now?
You have a few options:
Use the snapshot
You can open one of the two attachments and read it directly. The intros.html file contains the dots, the bookmarks.html doesn’t.
Import into your browser
You can import your favourites into Chrome web browser directly from the snapshot you recieved by email. Instructions to “import from bookmarks file” are here
Import into Reddit
You can share your favourites list as a set of Reddit links. Contact joe@folktunefinder.com if you want to do this.
Import into Diigo
You can import your favourites from Diigo. Once you are logged in, click ‘Tools’ at the top of the screen then ‘Import Bookmarks’ at the bottom of the screen. Upload the snapshot of your bookmarks.
Import somewhere else
I am happy to try and help you transition your bookmarks into another system.
What can I use instead?
You could:
- use your browser’s built in bookmarking feature. Most browsers allow you to back-up and synchronize your bookmarks
- share tunes on social media, such as
- share your tunes on a social bookmarking site, such as
If you have any suggestions to add to the list, let me know.
Thank you
I’d like to say thanks to all the people who have engaged with the site over the years. I am sorry to be removing this feature, but it’s the right decision. I know it will upset some people, but I do run this for free and I don’t have enough time to dedicate to FolkTuneFinder as it is. Right from the start FolkTuneFinder was about helping people find tunes and this change focusses the site on doing that job.
As a result of this change the recent downtime, caused by search engine bots, will be easier to mitigate.
Hopefully this will mean that I have more time to make FolkTuneFinder even better!
Joe